With all that being said, is it really worth all those dollars? With the proliferation of social media, ads are now aired in full online before they hit the big screen on game day. If the majority of the audience has already seen the commercials, do brands and companies need to spend the millions of dollars in airing it during the big game?

Moreover, with online media, campaigns and advertisements experience a much longer shelf life. In the past, once the commercials aired, that was it – no revisiting or replaying, no sharing. Now, with the popularity of social media and the ever-growing online video platform YouTube, advertisements live on for days, months, and even years. As such, the success of an ad relies not only on the viewership on game-day, but on the virality of the ad – How many times was it viewed? How many times was it mentioned on Twitter? How many shares did it receive?

In recent years, some of the most successful ad campaigns relied on social media. Nike’s “Write The Future” ad aired during the 2010 FIFA World Cup and relied on a heavy social media/viral push in the months leading up to the championship game. In a twist of convention, Nike isn’t an official sponsor of FIFA World Cup – Adidas is. According to statistics from Wieden+Kennedy (the agency that produced the campaign), Nike generated 40 million + online views of their 3-minute spot, 1.9 billion impressions on Facebook, and their Facebook Fan Page experienced an increase of 336 per cent in Likes. Above all that, Nike captured 30 per cent of the brand buzz – double that of Adidas.

From Dave Thier of Forbes: “A stat like $3.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime may see a serious hit in the future as advertisers realize that the internet can yield just as big an audience as football without having to go through NBC.”

Below, we take a look at some of the 2012 Super Bowl advertisements that have been generating buzz in the past few weeks and offer our own critique of their potential success and virality:

Honda CR-V: Matthew Broderick “Matthew’s Day Off”

Car manufacturers will appear to be taking over our television sets this weekend as commercial after commercial will be turbocharged and performance-inspired. Honda is releasing their newest model of the CR-V and hoping to take us back to our days of bowl cuts and Club Monaco sweaters. Using the clever appeal of the ever popular ‘80s movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the commercial stars Matthew Broderick as he takes a day off from his acting responsibilities. The commercial revisits memorable scenes from the movie and even ties in a Chinese New Year angle.

For a social tie-in, Honda has a Leap List Facebook app on their Page encouraging users to create a bucket list of activities they want to complete during the leap year. Nothing to note on Twitter besides their official hashtag: #dayoff.

• Our take: Is it memorable? No, there’s nothing humourous or riské and nothing to drive us to pass it on to our friends. Moreover, the entire ad spot has been aired online. Viral success? The ad has been on YouTube for four days and it already has nearly 434,000 views. Chances of me taking a bathroom break when this spot airs on game day? 100 per cent.

Volkswagen: “The Bark Side”

Volkswagen is given top marks in my books for not revealing the entire ad prior to the big game – you’re paying millions of dollars for a 60-second spot, take advantage of it. By producing a commercial for their commercial, VW cleverly leaves us wanting more by peaking our curiousity for what’s to come. The fan favourite The Force from last year’s Super Bowl was a huge hit that attracted nearly 50 million views online and this year VW builds on that with their The Bark Side commercial for a commercial. The dogs bark through Darth Vader’s theme, a.k.a. The Imperial Death March, and that’s it.

• Our take: Unlike the other car commercials we touch on in this post, there isn’t even a hint of a car or a mention of horsepower in this commercial and, ultimately, that’s what the Super Bowl viewer wants: to be entertained. VW gets top marks because they don’t reveal the actual advertisement online, leaving us curious and wanting to view more. Proof of their success: the teaser already has over 10 million hits on YouTube. Above all that, who doesn’t love cute dogs?

Hyundai

As if we weren’t getting enough of car advertisements, Hyundai decides to hit us with five advertisements on game day. Five. The theme of the advertisements is performance and follows a very patriotic American theme. From a man performing chest compressions on his unconscious boss and the stars and stripes forever, to a racing cheetah and the Rocky theme song, the commercials, according to Inside Line (and we couldn’t agree more), are “all over the map creatively.” Of the five commercials, the only one that has Super Bowl potential is the “All For One” ad that scored the coveted pre-kick time slot. With the Rocky theme song and over 200 “actual” Hyundai team members, the ad provides a decent mix of random humour and pop culture appeal.

• Our take: Hyundai should have saved the tens of millions of dollars spent on the five ads. There is little to no social media back-up except for a handful of Facebook video posts and tweets. Their only possible saving grace is the “All For One” spot.

Coca-Cola: the polar bears

The Coca-Cola polar bears are throwing a game day party and they want us to join! Viewing from the comforts of their “snowfa”, the bears will be streamed live on the Coke Polar Bowl microsite and Coca-Cola is encouraging fans to RSVP to the party.

Coca-Cola is appealing to the nostalgia of the brand and bringing out the bears that we have all come to know, love, and associate with the brand. During the game, Coca-Cola will roll out two ads: a 30-second spot in the first quarter introducing the bears and a 60-second second quarter ad that will be a game-time call depending on how the game unfolds on the real-life field.

Moreover, Coca-Cola smartly extends the campaign across digital and mobile with the Coke Polar Bowl microsite. On game day, a live-stream will show the bears on their snowfa, allowing fans to chat with them live during the game. Additionally, rich-media banners will show the bears reacting to the game and the commercials as they play out. Twitter and Facebook will see Coca-Cola writing notes to fans and sending out clips extracted from the live stream. For a social good touch, Coke has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and is donating $1 to every event RSVP on Facebook.

• Our take: The ads themselves aren’t memorable. While they are cute and have a nostalgic appeal, there’s nothing there to encourage anyone to share it or watch it more than once. Additionally, the ad doesn’t appeal to the target audience – online interactions seem more appealing to younger children than to 18-34 year old men noshing on hot wings and beer. Coca-Cola’s success will lie in their strong social media tie-in with the microsite and the live-stream.

H&M: David Beckham underwear line

In the ad’s YouTube description, H&M claims that he is “sporting various pieces from the new collection.” I don’t know about you, but I really only see one piece.

• Our take: Sex appeal. Done.

Within 15 mins I had made up my mind to buy something at Coach and not something small — something of significance — for the person I love the most in my life. I’d never purchased anything at Coach before. I didn’t even know where the nearest store was, but my decision was made and it took less time than most gift buying decisions I’ve made.

This is an incredible story for any brand, nonetheless a brand I wasn’t familiar with, had no affinity for, and generally associated with high school. For the Christmas 2011 I used Pinterest in a way that helped to make my life unbelievably easy and my girlfriend unbelievably happy simply by shopping for her directly from her Pinterest account.

Pinterest is hot — seriously hot.

From VentureBeat “The still-invite-only, one year-old digital pin-board site attracted nearly 11 million visitors in the week ending Dec. 17, according to data intelligence company Hitwise. Hitwise counts Pinterest as one of the top 10 websites in the social networking and forums category.”

Top 10 is actually being disingenuous. Pinterest actually falls in as the #7 social networking website, ahead of the likes of Google+ and Tumblr. That along with $37 mil in the coffers means that investors get it and so do a large number of interneters.

But like most new platforms, brands have been slow to get involved. And this is surprising because Pinterest is ripe for brands — it’s a collection of beautiful/interesting/desired things that get captured, collected, shared and ultimately bought. It’s a crowd-sourced consumer magazine at its best. Pinterest’s pages look just like those of major catalogues, something I’m sure Pinterest re-purposed on, well, purpose. Pinterest was created for the ADD mind of the Internet, for the scrollers of blogs and for those that always called themselves visual learners when we we’re growing up.

But Pinterest is more than just a social website — it’s a place to discover the wants of an individual. Facebook gives you their life story, Twitter tells you what they are doing right now but Pinterest tells you what they want their house to look like, where they want to go for vacation and even what recipe they want to make for dinner. Once brands figure this out and create strategy to tap into this huge trove of knowledge, it’s game on.

Brands everywhere are going to quickly begin to take notice to Pinterest, but those that figure out why people love the platform will be the ones that succeed the quickest. Happy pinning!

Charity Swear Box
Do you curse a lot? Do you curse a lot on Twitter? Just like if you had a swear jar at home, Charity Swear box will donate a dollar for each swear word your tweet. This creative social media tool for good was created by James Dow and Jay Gelardi, and is a easy, low involvement way to raise funds for charity. Creating something fun, that users already do, results in an easy to use, exciting campaign for good, for the world. If you know someone or seen someone who swears all the time, show them the Charity Swear box and tell them to put their bad words to good use. Watch the lovely explanatory video here, and sign up now as our friends at Fuck Cancer are the featured charity!

Snoball
Today’s savvy digital audience prefers information tailored to them, based on their preferences. News articles, friends reommendations, local events etc., combine for a more personalized experience online. Snoball sees this and is a way for users to donate to charity in an way that’s easy, social and fun. Based on a users preferred activities, and tied to everyday interests, the user is in control of their giving. Create an event, invite your friends to join, when your friends join, the snowball grows through customizable micro-donations or one-time gifts. The concepts behind snowball, and its personalized features, make fundraising results happen easily. The tool is useful because it is automated, fun and group based around events, all to create a “snoball” effect. Still not sure? Watch their video.

TousDonateurs
A recent comScore report notes television ads work substantially less effectively on Millennials than on older generations. However, the presence of key creative elements in advertising were shown to relate strong to successful advertising. TousDonateurs is French site where the advertisers donate to charity if users watch their ads. Users go to the site and select a charity that means something to them. They then watch several 30-second long ads, answer a quick question (to confirm the ad was watched), and the advertiser donates a euro on behalf of the viewer. We already watch 4 billion online videos each day — why not watch with purpose.

WeTopia
WeTopia is an online social game where players can contribute to real world problems. The Facebook game is all about players having fun while raising money for children’s charities. The game is free to play, and users create villages and help the community. When a player purchases a virtual good, that action results in a donation to a real world cause. With so many people playing social games, WeTopia is a way for players to contribute to a cause in a social way. WeTopia has many partners including Save the Children, Children’s Health Fund and others. Brand partners include Clorox, Mattel and Dippin’ Dots. It’s also great to note that in the past Zynga has donated millions of dollars to causes via Zynga.org group.

For even more creative social for good projects,  check out the 50/50 make or break initiative. The inititave is based around a challenge: to launch 50 projects in 50 days then raise 1million pounds for famine relief in East Africa. Looking for inspiring projects or want to get involved? Click here: 50/50 make or break initiative

These were the four main points of view from the panelists at last month’s New York Times Developer Network event. The speakers represented four very different companies and approaches to the growing social landscape.

The first speaker, Andy Mitchell, a strategic partner developer for Facebook, spoke about the changes to the social graph on the most widely used social network in the world. The most influential change in his opinion is the yet-to-be-released open graph. After showing off two well-produced promotional videos for the new releases, the key message finally clicked with me. Now, more than ever, brands will be able to follow their fan-base as they perform nearly every task on Facebook. Well beyond the like at this point, the open graph opens up the possibility to perform set action/object combinations pre-determined by application developers. There will be three global actions, listen, watch, and read, that anyone on Facebook can utilize as well.

You can already see early usage of the listen action if you have any friends that are avid Spotify users. Ultimately, Mitchell said, Facebook would like to make this social graph completely open, allowing users to determine the words and objects to define what they are currently doing.

But for now the approach is to build relationships with partners and application developers to begin indirectly teaching Facebook users how this new feature works.

The next speaker up to bat was Jason Ellis, a member of the research team at IBM that specializes in developing technology to improve the lives of inhabitants of developing countries, who they consider to be the next billion users on the Internet. Most of their recent projects use SMS to help people do things like trade farming tips, or learn about HIV. He imparted his extensive knowledge of these countries, especially those in Africa, and mapped out the expansive growth of wireless internet technology on the continent.

The approach needs to be simple enough for users understand immediately, but the technology needs to be able to solve many problems we do not face here in North America. Once the Internet becomes more stable in Africa, Ellis hopes social media will be more inclusive of these too consistently overlooked populations.

Nicole Valentine took the podium to talk about just about the exact opposite type of community, Figment.com. She is the VP of product and technology at Figment.com, and her goal is to build products that improve the experience for her “Figs” as they produce and read fiction on the site. Figment has grown to be the major hub for young adult readers and writers because it connects aspiring writers to their favorite authors, giving them direct access to those they admire. Rabid fans have attracted the attention of major advertisers who partner with Figment to produce online contests aimed at the tween/teen population. Book publishers have also found a new medium to promote their wares to a very welcoming audience.

Valentine  said she believes niche is the future of social media — all we need to do is find the thing we are geeky about.

Cameron Koczon, more commonly known as Fictive Cameron, started his presentation using the biting wit that has drawn attention to his latest project, Gimme Bar.

His question is “why can’t I keep all my bookmarks and cool stuff I find on the web forever?” The issue is that when you begin using a service to store bookmarks, images, recipes, content, or memes, there is a pretty good chance you are going to leave that service when something newer and cooler comes along. What happens to all the stuff you collected while you were using that app? Well, you’ve got to let it go and start fresh.

Gimme bar gives you the option to store all kinds of content you find on the internet in a collection that you can own, and even upload to dropbox if you so wish. If you haven’t already,  give Gimme Bar a try so you can start saving all of your favorite images of Boo the dog, landscapes of Tahiti, or whatever it may be that gets you going.

I really enjoyed the format of the NY Times Open event. It was extremely interesting to hear about the ways to approach social media from so many differing perspectives. If there is one overall takeaway I can provide, it’s that social media is what you make it, and there really is a place for everyone on the Internet. Isn’t that sweet?

Ashish Gurung teaches an undergraduate social media course at SFU Beedie School of Business. He is also involved with a bunch of other stuff ‚ some startups, some consulting and lots of non-profits. Find him @ashishgurung and http://www.ashishgurung.ca

Tell us a bit about the social media course you created. What motivated you to create an entire course about social media at SFU’s Beedie School of Business?

Jan Kietzmann, a SFU professor, had the idea to bring social media to the business school. We noticed students were entering the work force with little or no formal education in social media. So, we paired up to teach this course. This is the first course dedicated to social media at the SFU Beedie School of Business. It just makes sense — students need to be educated about social media, especially from a business-driven context. It’s a natural and needed extension to our undergraduate program. Plus our class reached the waiting list within a few days of registration.

Why do you think it’s important for students to learn about and familiarize themselves with social media?

It’s important for our students to not only learn about current trends in social media, but to understand social media as a whole – from learning about behavioural economics, to virality and building communities. We’re bringing the gap between the classroom and industry. We’re skyping in awesome startups like Summify and Launchrock, and the students get a chance to meet leaders from Invoke, HootSuite and EA. It’s a great balance between theory and practical applications. Students will be leaving our class with a greater understanding of social media and its impact on both society and businesses.

Why do you think it’s important to incorporate social media in universities and lecture halls?

I think it’s very important to incorporate social media in our classrooms. I know many instructors who still don’t believe in the power of social media and refuse to integrate it in their classrooms. It’s how the students communicate with each other — it’s how they hear the news. There’s a high probability that students are browsing Facebook while in class. It’s important to now use these tools to enhance the learning experience.

Invoke: Where do you see the future of social media in the classroom?

Our class uses a Facebook group and Twitter chat (#bus495) to communicate with each other and it’s awesome. Students are posting articles, comments and having discussions everyday on our Facebook group and Twitter chat. I’m surprised by how much the students have embraced it — they’re communicating with each other, getting to know each other and are having intelligent conversations over these channels. As the instructors, we’re using Facebook to post online notes, presentations and class updates. I’m hoping to see more classrooms embrace social media. The goal is to create a culture in the classroom where students are learning from each other and from the instructors. I believe we’ll start to see educators adopt web apps that encourage a social learning environment.

What are your top five industry sites that you check out on a regular basis?

Hacker News,  Summify, 
Hootsuite , Social Media Examiner and TechCrunch.